hardware

This weekend AMD's Llano APUs started shipping this week and Newegg has started offering select models! While I won't be picking one up myself (sorry, I still like my discrete Radeon HD 3850 and will most probably continue to buy discrete PCIe cards), the release of this product makes me really happy because it's been too long that PC manufacturers have been skimping on graphics to lower the cost of PCs and it's really the consumer that pays the price in the end. Yes, true, you can argue "well they should have read the specs" but let's face it, your average consumer has no idea what the difference between the Intel GMA X3150, GeForce 310M or a Radeon HD 6670M is even though choosing one or the other will dramatically affect how they perceive their computer's performance. It is all too common that I see OEMs advertise their beefy and overpriced PCs as fast and all-capable and then when you look at the specs it's got something terribly outdated and underpowered like an Intel GMA X4500 or nVidia GeForce 7100 graphics processor. Seriously, why even bother with the powerful CPU if it can't handle any sort of graphics properly?

The situation is even worse for laptops... In the past few months I've found that it is nearly impossible to find a laptop that has a nice balance between CPU and GPU power for the average consumer. OEMs seem to have their computers fall into one of three builds, and those builds are (a) low-power computing with cheap CPUs and integrated graphics (b) high performance computing with i5s/i7s and an overkill on RAM or (c) gaming computers that weigh lots, have a short battery life and are very expensive. In my opinion they are completely missing the mark on what the "average consumer" actually needs, which is a mediocre CPU with a entry level discrete graphics card and a healthy amount of RAM (3 or 4GB is acceptable) in the $600-700 range. You can think of it as targeting "basic gaming" or "media PC". Samsung has been very good at this actually, offering laptops the higher-end Core 2 Duo CPUs or i3s with the low-class nVidia GeForce 310M/320M series GPUs (some even in the $550-range). Computers like that are well priced, perfect for web & office work but won't choke if you throw 1080p at it, and you could even play Starcraft 2 or WoW on low settings.

Anyways, all that goes to say that this integrated graphics madness should now come to an end. I can't wait until the OEMs start using the AMD chips in desktop in laptops, as it will provide the consumer with a cost-effective computer that can actually process a decent graphic payload - and that's worth a lot. Not to mention that the battery life should improve considerably, too.